Electric Cars Could Cut US Gasoline Consumption Up to 20% by 2035

Stephen Lacey is the Editor-in-Chief of Greentech Media. He manages a team of writers focused on solar, storage, efficiency, mobility, and grid modernization. He is producer/host of The Energy Gang and Interchange podcasts, two leading interview and analysis shows on the business of energy and cleantech.

Demand for U.S. gasoline is expected to fall by 5% -- and could be cut by as much as 20% -- over the next two decades, according to a new report released Monday by energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. The culprit? Electric cars.

The U.S. currently uses more than 9 million barrels of gasoline a day. According to the report, if electric cars gain more than 35% market share by 2035, the U.S. could see a cut from 9 million to 2 million barrels used a day.

PV-Tech: SolarCity’s Triex Cell to Be Included in Chinese Anti-Dumping Investigation

The U.S. Department of Commerce has upheld its preliminary ruling that SolarCity’s Triex cells were included within the scope of the anti-dumping duties, in a memorandum dated June 17.

SolarCity’s claim that its products should be excluded from the scope of the order as the Silevo modules are manufactured with a c-Si substrate, and the substrate is not what defines a cell, was ultimately rejected, after a thorough analysis of the information put forward by both parties after the initial ruling.

The memorandum states that the Triex cells are to be included within the order, which means that any Silevo products imported from China to the U.S. will have to pay duties upfront at customs, reducing the competitiveness of the product.

Vox: Fossil Fuel Companies Impose More in Climate Costs Than They Do in Profits

There's been a lot of work recently trying to quantify carbon risk. A recent contribution to that conversation was released by Chris Hope and colleagues at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, titled "Quantifying the Implicit Climate Subsidy Received by Leading Fossil Fuel Companies." It attempts to put a number on the carbon risk facing the world's top 20 fossil fuel companies, the ones most directly vulnerable to a price on carbon. The results suggest that those companies are in a perilous situation.

The results are pretty startling. To wit: "For all companies and all years, the economic cost to society of their CO2 emissions was greater than their after-tax profit, with the single exception of ExxonMobil in 2008." In other words, if these fossil fuel companies had to pay the full cost of the carbon emissions produced by their products, none of them would be profitable.

Japan’s hot springs, known locally as “onsen,” have been in use for more than a millennium as communal baths. Additionally, to this day, heat bubbling up from below the Earth’s surface is used in some mountain villages to boil eggs or to keep roads free of winter snow and ice.

Tapping that resource on a much larger scale remains elusive. At the end of 2015, Japan had about one-third the installed geothermal capacity of Indonesia and one-fifth the U.S., according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data. Moreover, Japan’s geothermal capacity has been little changed since at least 2000.

Nike is serious about sustainability. The latest step in the athletic giant’s strategy to shrink its supply-chain footprint involves teaming up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Climate CoLab to hasten the development of innovative materials.

“For more than a decade, we’ve worked hard to understand where our greatest impacts lie,” Hannah Jones, chief sustainability officer and vice president of the company’s Innovation Accelerator, shared in a statement, noting that the company has estimated its material choices account for about 60 percent of the environmental effects of one pair of Nike running shoes.